REVIEW: KCBallet, “Carmina Burana”

I reviewed the Kansas City Ballet’s season opening performance, “Carmina Burana,” for The Kansas City Star.

Orff is probably best known by the punch-you-in-the-face drama of that opening “O Fortuna,” but his committment to “total art” was more thorough than even Wagner’s. Orff’s theory of music and movement, his committment to children’s music education, along with the method and instruments he and Gunild Keetman developed into the Schulwerk, and their five volume set of “Musik für Kinder,” continue to train and inspire children from musical exploration to mastery.

Among the many, many aspects of the show that just didn’t make it into the review was the poignant male duet with the chiarascuro lighting, the Botticelli “Birth of Venus” allusion, the hot, hot, hot duet during the carnal love scene and its sweet counterpart of courtly love, and the impressive Rose Window “Wheel of Fate”.